> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://aarr.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # ESPN’s ‘Saban’ Series Shows the Lessons Behind Seven National Titles - URL: https://aarr.org/nick-saban-espn-series-lessons/ - Published: 2026-11-05T16:57:56.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-05T16:57:56.000Z - Description: ESPN's six-part series "Saban" follows Nick Saban from his father's youth team in West Virginia to seven titles. In interviews around the premiere, Saban explains how he came to value his father's hard demands and how Miss Terry's blunt advice changed his press conferences. - Author: AARR Staff - Tags: News, NCAA, Sports, Movies and Shows ## A Six-Part Look at the Man Behind the Headset ESPN's six-part series "Saban," which tells the life and coaching story of Nick Saban, can be watched in full on the ESPN App. Subscribers with an ESPN bundle can also stream it on Disney+. Nick and Terry Saban attended the premiere in Tuscaloosa. ## How the Series Was Made The series was directed by Russell Dinallo and produced by Words + Pictures for ESPN. It draws on hundreds of hours of footage that had never been shown, from locker rooms, practice fields and behind-the-scenes moments during Saban's years at Alabama. More than 70 people appear, from former players and coaches to colleagues and family. Bill Belichick and Kirby Smart are among them. Dinallo has said the filmmakers interviewed Saban seven times. Terry Saban, known to fans as Miss Terry, gives extended interviews of her own. ## A Demanding Father, Understood Later Dinallo has called the bond between Saban and his father, Nick Saban Sr., the thread that runs through the series. Growing up in Monongah, West Virginia, Saban played for the Black Diamonds, the Pop Warner team his father coached. The third episode, named for the team, covers those years through family members, friends and former teachers. His father's standard was perfection. Saban told The Athletic that when he mowed the lawn at his father's service station as a boy, any uneven patch meant doing the job again, and that even after a win on the football field his father found what had fallen short. He asked his mother why his father was always on him. She told him the point was not beating the other team but being the best he could be. Saban played defensive back at Kent State and stayed on as a graduate assistant. Dinallo has said Saban coached one game, told his father he liked the work and might make a career of it, and had his father's blessing. Before the next game, his father died suddenly of a heart attack. Saban was 22. Only with time did the son see those demands differently. Saban told The Athletic that what had once felt like constant fault-finding came to look like lessons in compassion for others, in accountability and in measuring himself against what he was capable of rather than against the scoreboard. He said he probably never had the chance to tell his father how much he appreciated it. ## Miss Terry's Honest Advice Lindsay Rovegno, vice president and executive producer for ESPN Originals, has said the series explores the couple's partnership in detail and shows how heavily Saban leaned on his wife and how much he valued her opinion. Saban has told the story of her advice about the press on a podcast the day before the premiere and again to The Athletic. When he complained that reporters made him out to be a hard man with no compassion for his players, she asked whether he ever watched himself. He admitted he did not, and she told him what reporters saw: an anxious coach who never smiled or joked, had no relationships with them and showed little respect for people whose job was to promote his sport. He bristled, then decided she was right, and with the help of media training he grew more at ease at the podium. He told The Athletic that she completely changed his approach to the media and that he would not be working at ESPN today without that change. At the premiere, he said she often told him things he did not want to hear, and that it helped. ## Michigan State and The Process Saban coached Michigan State for five seasons in the late 1990s, and he has said his approach changed there. Previewing the series on ESPN's "Get Up," he described the coach he had been as transactional, focused on winning and not enough on the work it took to win, and said he became process-oriented at Michigan State, focused on one play at a time. He told The Athletic that a game against Ohio State that he doubted his team could win pushed him to ask what his players could chase other than victory. Players had more success and more fun, he said, once he led in a way he calls more transformational, with more weight on serving them and on their futures. At Michigan State he also met sports psychiatrist Dr. Lionel "Lonny" Rosen, who became a key partner in developing The Process, Saban's method built on preparation, discipline and attention to detail, and who helped refine the way he motivated players. In the series, Rosen compares Saban to a predator running on instinct rather than someone driven by wins. ## Behind the Scenes at Alabama Among the private moments the series reveals is halftime of the national championship game after the 2017 season, with Alabama trailing Georgia, when Saban benched Jalen Hurts for Tua Tagovailoa. Saban told The Athletic he did not know anyone had filmed it, and that carrying out the decision at halftime was even harder than making it. Tagovailoa's touchdown pass in overtime won the title. Saban has praised the way Hurts handled it. Hurts stayed at Alabama, graduated and remained a team leader, then came off the bench the next season to win the SEC Championship Game when Tagovailoa was hurt. ## Seven National Championships Saban won seven national championships in all. The first came at LSU after the 2003 season, before he left for the Miami Dolphins in 2005\. He returned to college football at Alabama in 2007 and coached there for 17 seasons, winning six more. His teams also produced four Heisman Trophy winners, among them 2009 winner Mark Ingram, who appears in the series. ## Retirement and Looking Back The series also shows for the first time the January 2024 team meeting where Saban told his Alabama players he was retiring. He said he had always been fully committed to helping each of them succeed in life, that he did not feel he had met his own standard the season before, and that he could not do the job forever. His players applauded as he left the stage. Saban has said that with his coaching days behind him, he and Miss Terry had been reflecting and were ready to tell their story, and that the filmmakers encouraged him to look back at every stop and at the process behind what happened there. He told The Athletic the project gave him a chance to appreciate the lessons he learned and the relationships he built along the way. At the premiere, he said he hoped viewers would find something in the series to inspire them to be better people, to do their own work better and to have a better chance at success.